Young children's ability to distinguish thematic relations ...
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Schmitterer, Alexandra M. A.; Schroeder, SaschaYoung children's ability to distinguish thematic relations. Development andpredictive value for early readingformal und inhaltlich überarbeitete Version der Originalveröffentlichung in:formally and content revised edition of the original source in:
Cognitive development 50 (2019), S. 22-35, 10.1016/j.cogdev.2019.01.002
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Running head: THEMATIC JUDGMENT AND READING ACQUISITION
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Young Children’s Ability to Distinguish Thematic Relations:
Development and Predictive Value for Early Reading
Alexandra M.A. Schmitterer1 & Sascha Schroeder2
1DIPF | Leibniz Institute for Research and Information in Education
2Max Planck Institute for Human Development
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version here: DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cogdev.2019.01.002
Running head: THEMATIC JUDGMENT AND READING ACQUISITION
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Abstract
Thematic relations are important semantic features in the young child’s lexicon. So far,
it is unclear how the ability to distinguish different strengths of thematic relations develops,
whether this ability depends on specific word characteristics (homonyms), and whether it is
linked to reading acquisition. In this longitudinal study, 62 children were asked to judge which
of two words (i.e., thunder, fire) matched a presented context sentence (i.e., Miriam sees the
lightning.) in a thematic judgment task. The strength of the thematic relation of the distractors
to the target sentence (associated, unrelated) and types of context words (homonyms, non-
homonyms) were varied. Children’s performance was more accurate and developed faster in
the unrelated than in the association condition. Furthermore, children were more accurate in
homonym compared to non-homonym responses. Moreover, children’s thematic judgment
abilities predicted their later reading skill over other important precursor abilities of reading,
including listening comprehension.
Keywords: semantics; thematic relations; homonymy; longitudinal study; reading acquisition
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1. Introduction
Semantic knowledge is an important component of human cognition that plays a key
role in the interpretation of natural objects, interactions, and abstract concepts such as
language (McRae & Jones, 2013). Therefore, semantic knowledge is fundamental to learning
new abilities. There is evidence that young children in particular are likely to use thematic
relations (e.g., tiger-zoo; related by contiguity) to organize semantic knowledge in their
lexicon (e.g., Berger & Donnadieu, 2006, 2008; Hashimoto, Mc Gregor, & Graham, 2007;
Scheuner, Bonthoux, Cannard, & Blaye, 2004).
Given the importance of thematic knowledge in early childhood, the ability to
distinguish different thematic relations could also influence another important milestone of
children’s development in modern societies: reading acquisition. However, even though
semantic knowledge is a basic component in theories of reading (e.g., Coltheart, Rastle,
Perry, Langdon, & Ziegler, 2001; Goswami & Ziegler, 2005; Perfetti & Hart, 2002), effects
of thematic knowledge on emergent literacy have--to our knowledge--not been studied.
Regarding adults, some studies have shown that good readers or spellers are more
proficient in distinguishing thematically related words than poor readers or spellers (Andrews
& Bond, 2009; Perfetti & Hart, 2002; Perfetti, 2007). However, these studies focused on
thematic relations among homonyms, that is words with the same phonological and
orthographic representations but distinct semantic mappings (e.g., ball; toy or dance event).
The studies showed that good reading and spelling ability was linked to the ability to
distinguish separate homonym meanings and their respective thematic relations to other
words. However, it has remained unclear whether this ability is also linked to children’s
reading acquisition. We still do not know whether and how children’s thematic knowledge is
linked to their development of literacy skills.
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In this study, we aimed to investigate how thematic knowledge develops in early
childhood, whether there are differences in the development of thematic knowledge regarding
homonyms compared to non-homonyms, and how thematic knowledge is connected to
literacy development. We present results from a longitudinal study across 30 months in which
we followed young children’s ability to distinguish thematic relations of words to contexts
with homonyms or non-homonyms, and analyzed whether this was linked to later reading
abilities.
1.1.Thematic Knowledge in Early Childhood
The knowledge of meaning is a basic component of human cognition (McRae &
Jones, 2013). A recent review on the structure of semantic knowledge (Mirman, Landrigan,
& Britt, 2017) suggests that semantic representations are organized in two systems of
meaning relations: A taxonomic system that is based on rules of similarity (i.e., shared
features; tiger-cat) and a thematic system that is based on rules of contiguity (i.e., co-
occurrence; tiger-zoo).
Research on the development of semantic knowledge has shown that already 24-
month-old infants display taxonomic and thematic relations between words in their lexicon
(Arias-Trejo & Plunkett, 2013). Furthermore, a study by Hills, Maouene, Riordan and Smith
(2010) found that the co-occurrences of words (thematic relation) in early child-caregiver
communication was linked to children’s later vocabulary development. Moreover, some
studies suggest that young children are more likely to evaluate semantic connections between
words based on thematic but not on taxonomic relations (Berger & Donnadieu, 2006, 2008;
Hashimoto et al., 2007; Scheuner et al., 2004).
For example, Hashimoto and colleagues (2007) reported that six-year old children
were more likely to use thematic than taxonomic descriptions in a cognitively demanding
semantic judgment task. Thus, at this age lexical access to thematic relations seems to involve
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less effort than access to taxonomic relations. These findings suggest that the ability to know
and distinguish thematic relations between words might be an early indicator for the stability
of a semantic network in a child’s lexicon. However, little is known about the development of
thematic relations with regard to the acquisition of, and access to, different strengths of
relations across development, and how they relate to other abilities that are acquired during
early childhood, such as literacy abilities.
1.2. Effects of Thematic Knowledge on Reading
Semantic knowledge is not only a very important skill for the general human
cognitive system (McRae & Jones, 2013) but it is also important for the acquisition of more
abstract communication tools such as reading. Reading requires the ability to link objects and
concepts to their semantic representation in script. Every lexical theory of reading includes a
semantic component (e.g., Coltheart, Rastle, Perry, Langdon, & Ziegler, 2001; Goswami &
Ziegler, 2005; Perfetti & Hart, 2002). However, the structure of this semantic component is
often underspecified.
For example, in the psycholinguistic grain size theory by Ziegler and Goswami
(2005), the semantic component represents the storage of concepts that children retrieve if
they successfully convert phonological into orthographical representations. While
orthographic and phonological components are further specified, the semantic component is
not. Moreover, the lexical quality hypothesis (Perfetti & Hart, 2002) states that high quality
semantic representations in the lexicon are important for reading and reading comprehension
abilities - but no exact definition of high-quality representations is given.
While little is known about the influence of the quality of semantic representations on
reading in children, some studies have explored the quality of semantic representations in
adult reading processes. For example, Andrews and Bond (2009) presented a context
sentence and a probe word to participants. Probe words were varied based on their thematic
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relation to the sentence, and participants were asked to judge whether the probe had occurred
in the sentence. Poor spellers found it more difficult to reject thematically related words than
good spellers. Thus, these results point to a link between thematic knowledge and reading.
Andrews and Bond (2009) and others (Perfetti, 2007; Perfetti & Hart, 2002) focused on
thematic relations of homonyms.
A homonym is a specific type of word that has overlapping orthographic and
phonological lexical representations, but maps onto two or more distinct semantic concepts
(e.g., ball; toy or dance event). Participants’ performance on this task might not only depend
on their ability to distinguish between different thematically related words but also on their
ability to store and access the two meanings of a homonym separately.
Evidence for separate lexical entries of distinct homonym meanings has been found
for adults (e.g., Klepousniotou et al., 2008) and in children aged four and five years, but not
in children aged three years (Doherty, 2000; Srinivasan & Snedeker, 2013). This indicates
that the separate storage of distinct homonym meanings is not innate but develops in early
childhood. However, so far, no study has clarified whether this development and the ability to
separate homonym meanings is linked to reading acquisition in early childhood.
1.2.1 Thematic Knowledge and Reading Acquisition
In general, the link between thematic knowledge and reading in children has rarely
been studied. For example, Nation and Snowling (1999) found that priming effects in a
lexical decision task administered to 10-year-olds were stronger if words were taxonomically
and thematically related. Furthermore, they found that children with reading comprehension
difficulties relied more on thematic relations for lexical retrieval than children without
reading difficulties. Thus, there seems to be a link between thematic knowledge and reading
difficulties - but this has neither been studied for reading acquisition nor with regard to access
to different strengths of thematic relations.
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Some prediction studies with young children have investigated the effects of semantic
skills on reading. Semantic precursor abilities in these studies include grammatically complex
tasks, like listening comprehension tasks on the sentence or text level but not thematic
knowledge (e.g., Ennemoser, Marx, Weber, & Schneider, 2012; Leppänen, Aunola, Niemi, &
Nurmi, 2008; Nation, Cocksey, Taylor, & Bishop, 2010; Nation et al., 2010). Furthermore,
these studies only found effects of semantic knowledge on more complex reading
comprehension tasks at the sentence or text level at later stages of reading acquisition -
without clarifying how semantic knowledge is linked to early reading abilities. It is thus still
unclear whether thematic knowledge predicts reading abilities, particularly at an early stage.
1.3 Rationale of the Present Study
In this study, we aimed to contribute to the literature and the general understanding of the
connection between thematic knowledge and reading acquisition by investigating the
development of thematic knowledge in early childhood, and how it is linked to early reading
development. To this end, we created a thematic judgment task in which different strengths of
thematic relations had to be judged with regard to contexts, including homonyms and non-
homonyms. We manipulated the strength of thematic relations with a co-occurrence measure
based on child-directed literature, which is a novel method, as most previous studies have
used adult association ratings to identify thematic relations. Furthermore, we investigated
whether an early assessment of this ability before school entry could predict later word
reading skills over and above common predictors of reading abilities, including listening
comprehension at the sentence level.
The thematic judgment task was an auditory task following a forced-decision design.
Children were asked to match one of two words (A: matching word; B: distractor) to a
sentence (i.e., Miriam sees the lightning.). The matching word (A) was the same in all
conditions and occurred frequently together with the provided context (i.e., lightning,
Running head: THEMATIC JUDGMENT AND READING ACQUISITION
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thunder). There were two conditions which differed with regard to the presented distractor
(B). In an “association” condition, the distractor word was also associated to the target word
but to a smaller degree (i.e., lightning, fire). By contrast, in an “unrelated” condition the
target word was not associated with the target (i.e., lightning, letter). In addition, the context
sentences either used a non-homonym (i.e., Miriam sees the lightning) or a homonym (i.e.,
Felix kicks the ball). In trials with homonyms, the matching word was associated with the
dominant meaning of the homonym (i.e., ball [as a toy], foot) while the distractor in the
associated condition was related to the non-dominant meaning of the homonym (i.e., ball [as
a dance event], queen). The task was administered to the children twice before and twice after
school entry.
We expected that it would be more difficult for the children to select the matching
word in the association condition, as the distractor was also related to the context sentence. In
addition, we also expected that children’s performance would generally improve across
development but would show a stronger improvement in the association condition. This
hypothesis was based on the assumption that children continuously learn to differentiate
between different strengths of thematic relations as their lexicon grows. Furthermore, we
explored whether children showed different responses to context sentences containing
homonyms in comparison to sentences containing non-homonyms. Finally, we expected
children’s thematic judgement ability before school entry to predict early word reading
abilities at the end of first grade in addition to common reading precursors such as letter
sound knowledge and phonological abilities (see Leppänen et al., 2008).
2. Method
2.1. Participants
Data for this analysis comes from the longitudinal project PLAiT (Prerequisite
Language Abilities in the Transitional Phase) which explored the development of language
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processing in104 children from kindergarten until the end of first grade in Germany. In this
paper, we present results from a task that was assessed at four measurement points: 10
months (T1) and 4 months (T2) before school entry as well as 2 months (T3) and 10 months
(T4) after school entry. Participants were recruited from seven cooperating Early Childhood
Education and Care (ECEC) institutions. Children attended one of 18 groups in these
institutions and a signed consent form of a primary care giver was required.
We collected full data sets at all time points from 62 children. Twenty children (ca. 5
% at each measurement point) dropped out due to circumstances that are typical in
longitudinal study designs (relocating, missing assessments due to illness or vacations, not
completing all tasks at an assessment). In addition, 22 children left the study after T2 right
before school entry. The reason for this is that school entry is only loosely regulated in
Berlin. Therefore, parents can optionally enroll their child at school at the age of five, six, or
seven years. Even though all parents initially indicated that they wanted their child to start
school the following year, a substantial number of parents later revised their initial decision.
In order to ensure that the power of the analysis was still sufficient, we conducted a
power analysis for mixed effects models (Westfall, 2016) and used the model specification
provided in section 3.1. Results indicated sufficient power to detect even small effects (e.g., a
power of .995 for Cohen’s d = 0.45). Thus, despite the high drop-out rate, the power of our
analysis was high.
The final sample comprised 62 children (27 girls) from middle to high socioeconomic
backgrounds (as assessed by collecting information about the occupational status of their
parents; HISEI: M = 68.30; SD = 11.47; Ganzeboom, De Graaf, & Treiman, 1992;
Ganzeboom, 2010). Furthermore, these children scored within the normal range in a
standardized test of nonverbal intelligence (BUEVA-III; Esser & Wyschkon, 2016) and
vocabulary (PDSS; Kauschke & Siegmüller, 2009). The children’s mean age was 5;4 (years;
Running head: THEMATIC JUDGMENT AND READING ACQUISITION
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months, SD= 2.99 months) at T1, 5;10 (SD = 3.07 months) at T2, 6;4 (SD= 3.08 months), at
T3, and 7;0 (SD = 3.11 months) at T4. Before school entry, testing took place in a quiet room
in the child’s ECEC institution. After children had entered school, testing took place at our
research institute (82 %), the child’s school (13 %) or the child’s home (5 %). Children were
tested in individual sessions and received a small toy in return for their participation.
2.2. Thematic Judgment Task
An auditory thematic judgment task was designed to assess children’s thematic
judgment ability. First, a target sentence was presented (example 1: Miriam sees the
lightning.; example 2: Felix kicks the ball.). After this, two words A and B were presented. A
was a matching word (example 1: thunder; example 2: foot) and B was one of two types of
distractors (example 1: fire or letter; example 2: queen or pasta). Children were asked to
name the word which went best with the presented sentence. A-responses (i.e., example 1:
thunder; example 2: foot) were scored as correct.
The task followed a 2 (within-item: Type of Relation) x 2 (between-item: Type of
Word) design. Regarding the Type of Relation factor, half of the trials included the matching
word (A) and one type of distractor (B) that was weakly associated with the context (i.e.,
example 1: fire; example 2: queen) and were part of the associated condition. The other half
of the trials included the matching word (A) and a distractor (B) that did not co-occur with
the presented context (example 1: letter; example 2: pasta) and was called unrelated
condition. Regarding the Type of Word factor, half of the sentences used a non-homonym
(example 1: Miriam sees the lightning.) and half of the trials used a homonym (example 2:
Felix kicks the ball.). In the homonym items, distractors in the association condition were
associated with the non-dominant meaning of the homonym (i.e., queen; distantly related to
ball as a dance event).
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There was a pause of 1500 ms between the presentation of the sentence and the first
word and a pause of 500 ms between the presentations of the first and second word. The
order of presentation of item A and B within each trial and the order of Type of Relations
(distractors) across trials were varied for each target sentence using a Latin square design. To
avoid repetition effects, children were assigned to a different list at each measurement point.
The stimuli were presented using Inquisit (v. 3.1.0.6.) on a DELL Latitude 520 laptop
computer. After finishing four practice trials with feedback, 32 test trials were presented
without feedback in a randomized order. All responses were recorded by an experimenter.
2.2.1. Materials. The stimuli were based on 32 SVO-structured sentences, objects
serving as reference words. Subjects of the sentences were common German children’s
names, half of them male and half female. In addition, we selected 96 words (32 matching
words, and 32 associated distractors, 32 unrelated distractors). Materials were selected from
the childLex database for German children’s literature (Schroeder, Würzner, Heister, Geyken,
& Kliegl, 2015). The childLex corpus consists of 500 child-directed fictional and non-
fictional books covering a variety of topics (e.g., sports, princesses, magic, and fairy tales).
All sentences, target words and distractor words are provided in Tables A1 and A2 in the
Appendix.
2.2.1.1. Thematic relations. We calculated a measure t (see Equation 1) which
quantified the frequency of co-occurrence for two words within a sentence (Church, Gale,
Hindle & Hanks, 1991, p.125). The score is based on the number of sentences in the corpus
(N), the number of sentences in which the two words appear together (f (XY)), and the number
of sentences in which each of the words appears (f (X), f (Y)). The minimum value of the t-
score is 1, which indicates that two words are unrelated. The maximum of the t-score is
infinite.
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𝑡 =
𝑓(𝑋𝑌)
𝑁−
𝑓(𝑋)𝑓(𝑌)
𝑁2
√𝑓(𝑋𝑌)
𝑁
Objects of the sentences (reference words) served as the basis of our manipulation of
thematic relations. For example, the t-score of the co-occurrence of the lemma lightning and
the lemma thunder in childLex is 5.20. The t-score for the co-occurrence of lightning and fire
in childLex is 2.42. Therefore, thunder is thematically more closely related to lightning than
fire. In addition, the t-score for the co-occurrence of lightning and letter is 1. Therefore,
lightning and letter are thematically unrelated. The object of the target sentence (i.e.,
lightning) also appeared frequently with the verb of the target sentence (i.e., to see), t-score =
5.15.
All matching words had a t-score greater than 3. Distractors of the association
condition had a t-score that varied between 2 and 3, and distractors in the unrelated condition
had a t-score of 1, i.e., they were not thematically related to the reference word. The mean t-
scores for matching words and both types of distractors are summarized in Table 1. Matching
words co-occurred significantly more often with the reference word than distractors in the
association, ts(31) > 15.68, ps <.001 and unrelated condition, ts(31) > 32.80, ps <.001.
Distractors in the association condition also co-occurred significantly more often with the
reference word than distractors in the unrelated condition, ts(31) > 17.12, ps <.001.
2.2.1.2. Homonyms. Half of the objects of the context sentences were homonyms
(e.g., Felix kicks the ball.) that had identical orthographic forms (i.e., they were homographs)
and also shared the same pronunciation (i.e., they were homophones) but represented two
different meanings. The context sentence always referred to the dominant meaning of the
homonym. The dominance of multiple meanings was estimated based on the t-scores of all
related words to the homonym. For example, if the majority of words in the highest range of
the t-score (> 3) for the word ball were related to football (e.g., goal, foot), then the meaning
Running head: THEMATIC JUDGMENT AND READING ACQUISITION
13
of ball as a toy was assumed to be the dominant meaning. In the case of ball, only a minority
of highly related words connected to ball as a dance event so this meaning was assumed to be
non-dominant. The matching word always referred to the dominant meaning of the homonym
(e.g., in the ball example, the matching word referred to the toy) while the distractor in the
association condition referred to the non-dominant meaning of the homonym (i.e., queen),
and the unrelated distractor referred to none of the two meanings of the homonym (i.e.,
pasta).
The t-scores of the matching words and both types of distractors were matched
between non-homonyms and homonyms, all ts < 2, all ps >.05 (see Table 1). To validate our
decisions concerning dominant and non-dominant homonym meanings, we asked 12 parents
who had children at a similar age as the participating children at T1 (M = 5;2, years; months,
SD = 9.66 months) to rate how familiar their children were with the words used in this study.
The rating was conducted on a scale from 0 to 2. According to parents’ estimations, their
children were significantly more familiar with the dominant meanings, M = 1.81, SD = 0.50
than with the non-dominant meanings, M = 1.30, SD = 0.80, Δ = 0.51, t(15) = 3.56, p < .001.
2.2.1.3. Familiarity and length. All words appeared highly frequently in the childLex
corpus, M = 2.12, SD = 0.61 (normalized lemma frequencies per million, log-transformed to
the base of 10). In addition, the familiarity ratings (0-2) of parents with children at the same
age (see above) indicated that children of this age group were generally familiar with the
words, M = 1.84, SD = 0.47. Furthermore, we limited the length of the words by excluding
words with more than three syllables. Lemma frequency and number of syllables were
matched across conditions, all ts < 2, all ps >.05. Frequency and length in the different sets of
words and distractors are provided in Table 1.
Running head: THEMATIC JUDGMENT AND READING ACQUISITION
14
Table 1. Item Specifications of the Thematic Judgment Task
Examples Co-occurrence a Frequencyb N of Syllables
M SE M SE M SE
Non-Homonyms Miriam sees the lightning.
Matching word thunder 5.11 0.29 2.05 0.13 1.44 0.16
Associated word fire 2.62 0.09 2.11 0.08 1.63 0.13
Unrelated word letter 1 0.00 2.11 0.08 1.56 0.13
Homonyms Felix kicks the ball.
Matching word foot 4.92 0.32 2.23 0.16 1.44 0.12
Associated word queen 2.08 0.13 1.75 0.15 1.63 0.16
Unrelated word pasta 1 0.00 1.86 0.13 1.56 0.13
Note. a t-score calculated based on the co-occurrence in a sentence domain in childLex with the object of the target sentence; b normalized lemma
frequency per million in childLex, log transformed to the base of 10.
Running head: THEMATIC JUDGMENT AND READING ACQUISITION
15
2.3. Predictors of Reading and Reading Assessment
Letter-sound knowledge, phonological working memory, and a sentence
comprehension task were assessed at T1 in order to investigate whether children’s
performance on the thematic judgment task predicted their later reading skills over and above
other typical precursor reading skills. The ability to distinguish strengths of thematic relations
was assessed by the experimental thematic judgment task described in detail above. Letter-
sound knowledge was assessed by using a computerized experimental task in which children
were presented with a phoneme and had to select the correct letter from two presented letters.
Phonological working memory was assessed by means of a standardized digit recall task
(BUEVA; Esser & Wyschkon, 2002). Sentence comprehension was assessed by a
standardized test in which children had to select one out of three pictures representing the
meaning of a sentence (TSVK; Siegmüller, Kauschke, van Minnen, & Bittner, 2010). Word
reading ability was assessed via a standardized word-picture matching task (WLLP-R;
Schneider, Blanke, Faust, & Küspert, 2011) at the end of first grade (T4). The dependent
variable of all measures was the sum of correct responses. Descriptive statistics and
reliabilities (which were acceptable to good) are displayed in Table 2.
Table 2. Descriptive Statistics and Reliabilities of Covariates, Reading Predictors and
Reading Abilities
Task M SD Range Max α
Word Reading Abilities 36.44 17.99 7 – 78 80 .97
Thematic Judgment 24.71 5.18 13 – 32 32 .85
Sentence Comprehension 24.53 3.94 16 – 31 36 .65a
Letter Sound Knowledge 23.35 5.48 10 – 32 32 .83
Phonological Working Memory 20.81 4.62 11 – 30 52 .80
Note. Values represent the number of correct responses; a reported as .94 in the test’s manual.
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16
3. Results
3.1. Development of Children’s Ability to Distinguish Thematic Relations
First, we analyzed children’s development of the ability to distinguish among different
types of thematic relations as a function of word type. We used a generalized linear mixed-
effects approach because mixed-effects models allow to simultaneously take the variances of
both participants and items into account (Baayen, Davidson, & Bates, 2008).
Responses were analyzed using generalized linear mixed effects models with a logit
link and a binomial error distribution (glmer function from R-package {lme4}; Bates et al.,
2015). The logit transformation is a commonly used nonlinear transformation for binary
responses (see Cohen, Cohen, Aiken, & West, 2003). Due to the nature of this
transformation, responses at the boundaries of the response spectrum (0 and 1) are spread out
in order to linearize relationship and avoid ceiling effects. To ease interpretation, we back-
transformed all results when reported in the text. Response accuracy was defined as the
percentage of correctly identified matching words for each provided context sentence.
Responses were scored as correct if children chose the matching word (A; example 1:
thunder; example 2: foot) instead of one of the types of distractors (B; example 1: fire or
letter; example 2: queen or pasta) to match the provided context (example 1: Miriam sees the
lightning.; example 2: Felix kicks the ball.) Descriptive statistics of all four measurement
points are provided in Table 3.
In the glmer model, participants and items were treated as crossed random effects.
Time was treated as a fixed continuous variable (T1: -10, T2: -4, T3: 2, T4:10; 0 = school
entry). Type of Relation (2: association vs. unrelated) and Type of Word (2: homonyms vs.
non-homonyms) were included as fixed factors using effects coding. Phonological working
memory was included in the model in order to control for task demands. Omnibus effects
were calculated based on type-III model comparisons (Anova function from R package {car};
Running head: THEMATIC JUDGMENT AND READING ACQUISITION
17
Fox & Weisberg, 2011). Post-hoc analyses were carried out using single-degree-of-freedom
contrasts, using the glht function in the {multcomp} package. Prior to the analysis, accuracy
rates on the item level were compared between an adult control sample (N = 20; male = 11;
age: M = 25.2 years; SD = 3.24 years) and children’s responses across all time points. Based
on the comparison, responses in the association condition of two context sentences (Tor and
Planet) were excluded due to low accuracy rates (see Tables A3 and A4 in the Appendix).
Table 3. Percentage of Correctly Identified Matching Words in the Thematic Judgment Task
T1 T2 T3 T4
Condition M(SE) M (SE) M (SE) M (SE)
Non-Homonyms
Association 71.02
(2.46)
82.14
(1.93)
85.06
(1.74)
87.16
(1.60)
Unrelated 79.25
(2.04)
86.26
(1.63)
91.83
(1.20)
94.08
(1.00)
Homonyms
Association 78.51
(2.13)
84.41
(1.79)
87.42
(1.59)
90.45
(1.35)
Unrelated 81.88
(1.90)
92.40
(1.15)
93.14
(1.08)
95.91
(0.80)
Note. Response accuracy and standard errors represent the percentage of correct
responses in each condition and at each time point.
The results of the mixed-effect model analysis are displayed in Table 4. First, there
was a main effect of Time. Children’s overall performance improved between measurement
Running head: THEMATIC JUDGMENT AND READING ACQUISITION
18
points. At T1, children chose the matching word on average in 78.42% (SE = 2.13) of the
trials. Between T1 and T2, performance improved by 8.29% with an average score of 86.71%
(SE = 1.62). Between T2 and T3, children improved by 3.1%, M = 89.82% (SE = 1.38).
Between T3 and T4, children further improved by Δ = 2.41% and their response accuracy
was now close to ceiling, 92.23% (SE = 1.17).
Table 4. Omnibus Effects in the Thematic Judgment Task across Development
Effect χ2 Df p
Intercept 669.31 1 <.001
Phonological Working Memory 0.88 1 n.s.
Time 163.70 1 <.001
Type of Relation 86.73 1 <.001
Type of Word 9.05 1 <.01
Time x Type of Relation 9.47 1 <.01
Time x Type of Word 0.21 1 n.s.
Type of Relation x Type of Word 0.31 1 n.s.
Time x Type of Relation x Type of Word 0.23 1 n.s.
Note. χ2 for effects using Type III sum of squares; >.05 = ns.; <.01 = **; <.001 = ***.
Next, there was a main effect of Type of Relation. Across all four time points,
response accuracy was higher in the unrelated, M = 92.85% (SE = 1.12) than in the
association condition, M = 86.03% (SE = 1.7; Δ = 6.83%). Furthermore, there was a main
effect for Type of Word. Overall, response accuracy in trials with homonyms, M = 92.85%
Running head: THEMATIC JUDGMENT AND READING ACQUISITION
19
(SE = 1.12), was higher than in trials with non-homonyms, M = 90.46% (SE = 1.34; Δ =
2.39%).
Finally, there was an interaction effect of Time and Type of Relation. This interaction
was driven by the fact that the simple main effect of Time was larger in the unrelated
condition, = 0.08, SE = 0.01, t = 10.01, p < .001 than in the association condition, = 0.05,
SE = 0.01, t = 8.04, p < .001 (see Figure 1; differences of effects: = 0.03, SE = 0.01, t =
3.08, p < .01).
Figure 1. Development across Time in the Type of Relation and Type of Word conditions.
In summary, children performed above chance level in the thematic judgment task at
the beginning of the study and improved significantly over time. Responses were generally
more accurate in the unrelated than the association condition, and children also improved
more over time in this condition. In addition, accuracy for homonyms was generally higher
Running head: THEMATIC JUDGMENT AND READING ACQUISITION
20
than for non-homonyms but children showed no differences in the rate of development for
either type of word.
3.2. Prediction of Reading Abilities
In a second step, we tested whether children’s early thematic judgment skills
predicted word reading abilities (assessed at the end of grade 1) over and above three typical
precursor skills: letter sound knowledge, phonological working memory, and sentence
comprehension (all assessed 10 months before school entry). In particular, we were interested
in comparing the effects of children’s ability to distinguish between different thematic
relations to the effects of a sentence comprehension task, which is commonly used as a
measure of children’s semantic ability. We therefore computed children’s overall response
accuracy in the thematic judgment task by averaging over all conditions, and then computed
the bivariate correlations between all measures (see Table 5). The pattern of correlations
showed that thematic judgment ability correlated moderately with sentence comprehension
but no other variables. In addition, reading ability showed significant correlations with
thematic judgment, letter-sound knowledge, and phonological working memory but not with
sentence comprehension.
Table 5. Correlations of Reading, Semantic Assessments and Reading Predictors
Note. * p < .05, ** p < .01, *** p < .001.
Measures 1 2 3 4 5
1.Reading 1
2.Thematic Judgment .26* 1
3.Sentence Comprehension .16 .38** 1
4.Letter Knowledge .46*** .07 .18 1
5.Phonological Working Memory .31* -.05 .06 .26* 1
Running head: THEMATIC JUDGMENT AND READING ACQUISITION
21
Next, we fitted a multiple regression model using letter-sound knowledge,
phonological working memory, thematic judgment ability, and sentence comprehension as
predictor variables, and word reading skill as the outcome variable. All variables were z-
transformed before they were included in the analysis. The results of this analysis are
displayed in Table 6. The regression model explained a substantial amount of variance in
word reading at the end of first grade, R2= 32.11; F(4,57) = 6.74, p <.001. Letter-sound
knowledge had the largest effect on early word reading but thematic judgment also had a
significant effect. By contrast, sentence comprehension did not explain any variance in word
reading abilities. In summary, children’s word reading ability was predicted by children’s
ability to distinguish different thematic relations but not by sentence comprehension abilities.
This was surprising because both variables were moderately correlated.
Table 6. Reading Abilities Predicted by Thematic Judgment, Sentence Comprehension, and
Reading Predictors
Note. Variables were z-transformed before they were included in the model.
In a next step, we wanted to know whether the effect was driven by a specific
component of semantic processing. We therefore calculated separate correlations between
word reading abilities and response accuracy in the different conditions of the thematic
Variables B SE B t p
Thematic Judgment 0.27 0.12 2.31 < .05
Sentence Comprehension -0.03 0.12 -0.28 n.s.
Letter-Sound Knowledge 0.40 0.12 3.51 < .01
Phonological Working Memory 0.22 0.11 1.92 n.s.
Running head: THEMATIC JUDGMENT AND READING ACQUISITION
22
judgments task, i.e. for homonyms and non-homonyms, the association and the unrelated
condition. Results showed that responses in the association condition (r = .25, t = 2.01, p <
.05) and in the homonyms condition (r = .28, t = 2.29, p < .05) correlated with reading
abilities, while responses in the unrelated condition (r = .23, t = 1.88, p = .07) and the non-
homonyms condition (r = .22, t = 1.71, p = .09) showed smaller effects.
In order to explicitly test whether the correlations in the different conditions were
significantly different, we computed t-tests for pairwise correlations (see Cohen, Cohen,
West, & Aiken, 2003) that account for intercorrelations between the various conditions
(which was generally high: r ~ .70-.88). Results showed that effects in none of the conditions
differed significantly (all ts < 0.9 all ps > .85). Thus, the effect of the thematic judgment task
is quite homogenous and is not specifically related to performance in one of the conditions.
4. Discussion
In this longitudinal study, German-speaking children were asked to decide whether a
matching word (e.g., thunder) or one of two types of distractors (associated: fire; unrelated:
letter) fit better to a provided context sentence with a reference word (i.e., Miriam sees the
lightning). We manipulated the strength of thematic relations using a corpus-based co-
occurrence measure. In addition, sentences either contained a homonym (i.e., ball) or a non-
homonym (i.e., lightning) as a reference word. The task was administered to the same group
of children at two time points before and two time points after school entry. We investigated
how children’s ability to distinguish different strengths of thematic relations develops and
whether it predicts their later reading skills. We will discuss these two aspects separately.
4.1. Development of Thematic Judgment
As expected, children’s performance in the thematic judgment task improved
significantly over time. We cannot relate this finding to previous studies, as to our knowledge
the development of thematic relations has not been investigated for young children in a
Running head: THEMATIC JUDGMENT AND READING ACQUISITION
23
longitudinal design before. However, previous studies demonstrated that even very young
children can identify thematic relations (Arias-Trejo & Nation, 2013; Hashimoto et al., 2007).
From a usage-based perspective, one would expect to see improvements in this ability over
time because thematically related words are encountered more often in shared contexts. For
example, children’s ability to decide that thunder matches the sentence ‘Miriam sees the
lightning.’ better than the word fire will increase over time if thunder is encountered
proportionally more frequently than fire in the context of lightning in the child’s language
environment. That is, owing to an increasing exposure to the thematic structure of their
language environment, children are able to build up a more stable and differentiated semantic
network, which results in better performance. This is in line with findings from previous
studies that have linked exposure to child-directed speech to the growth of semantic networks
and the structure of children’s mental lexicon (Hills et al, 2010; Hills, Maouene, Maouene,
Sheya, & Smith, 2009; Steyvers & Tenenbaum, 2005).
In this study, we based item selection on the co-occurrences of words in child-directed
literature. Thus, the strength of thematic relations was based on the words’ occurrence in
books that are regularly used to entertain and teach young children. Our results show that this
was a sensible approach, as children performed above chance level in the thematic judgment
task even at the first measurement point. Therefore, children’s development in the semantic
judgement task might specifically be linked to the frequency of shared story book reading.
Child-caregiver, child-educator and child-peer conversations are certainly other important
sources of language input for learning thematic relations (see Hills et al., 2010).
In line with our expectations, children performed better when the distractor was
unrelated to the context of the sentence. This was a stable effect across time, showing that
children were able to distinguish strengths of thematic relations. Contrary to our expectations,
growth in performance was larger in the unrelated than in the association condition. We had
Running head: THEMATIC JUDGMENT AND READING ACQUISITION
24
expected near ceiling scores in the unrelated condition at all time points, which would lead to
a stronger improvement in the association condition. However, this was not the case. For
example, at the first time point, children concluded that the word pasta fitted better to the
sentence Felix kicks the ball than the word foot in about 20% of all trials. This indicates that
this task is not easy for young children. Six months later, children still made the same
decision only in about 9 % of the trials. Our results thus demonstrate that children improve
rapidly in this condition.
Our results also show that even at the age of five, children are not yet able to routinely
distinguish unrelated words from related words. Similar effects have been reported in
semantic priming studies with infants (e.g., Arias-Trejo & Plunkett, 2013; Styles & Plunkett,
2009) and adults (e.g., McNamara, 2005). In particular, Arias-Trejo and Plunkett (2013) have
argued that the influence of unrelated items in semantic priming is explained by lexical
restructuring during active periods of vocabulary growth (see also Mayor & Plunkett, 2014).
According to this account, semantic relations are reorganized during vocabulary expansion
and the thematic relation between associated words becomes blurred, which leads to
increased false-alarm rates in the unrelated condition.
Still, our findings can hardly be fully explained by the above account, see in particular
the strong improvement of children’s responses in the unrelated condition during a time
period of presumably intense vocabulary growth. We think that effects of nonlinear lexical
growth might have an additional impact (e.g., Hills et al, 2009; Steyvers & Tenenbaum,
2005). In particular, studies on children’s vocabulary development have shown that new
words are not acquired in a linear fashion but proportional to their frequency of occurrence in
the language environment. This might be particularly important for children’s performance in
the unrelated condition. For example, if a child encounters the word letter and the context
‘Miriam sees the lightning’ twice and the word thunder 10 times within the same context in
Running head: THEMATIC JUDGMENT AND READING ACQUISITION
25
the same time frame, the strength of their relations differs by a factor of 5, which might not
be a very salient difference. Imagine, however, that after a year, thunder has been
encountered 40 times in this particular context while letter has only been encountered four
times. Now the strength of the relation between the words with the context differs by the
factor 10 and the strength of relation has grown closer four times as fast for thunder than for
letter. Thus, the distance between the relations of the two words with the context becomes
more salient over time.
Simultaneously, the relations of weakly associated words with the reference words
evolve as well. For example, if a child encounters the word fire in the context of ‘Miriam sees
the lightning’ five times, the factor of the distance of relation to the matching word (thunder)
is 2. If after a year, fire has appeared with the context 25 times (and thunder 40 times), the
distance of relations still differs by the factor 1.6. The closeness of the weakly associated
words to the context has then grown slightly stronger and more distracting. By comparison,
unrelated words have become more distant. Thus, both the increasing distraction by
associated words and the growing distance to unrelated words contribute to a stronger
development in judgments about unrelated words, and overall lead to stronger and more
differentiated thematic relations in the lexicon.
The strong growth of accuracy values in the unrelated condition brought children’s
responses near ceiling at the end of first grade. Our study focused on a limited time span of
development and it is difficult to determine whether developmental trajectories would shift
later when vocabulary growth slows down and it is presumably easier to reject unrelated
items. Thus, more studies on the development of thematic judgment are needed to determine
how growth of thematic relations continues.
Moreover, children’s performance was better for homonyms than for non-homonyms.
This finding is in line with the assumption that children have separate lexical representations
Running head: THEMATIC JUDGMENT AND READING ACQUISITION
26
for the two meanings of a homonym. Accordingly, ball as a toy and as a dance event are
treated like separate words (e.g., Doherty, 2000; Srinivasan & Snedeker, 2013). As the
matching word always referred to the more frequently used meaning of the homonym and the
distractor to the less frequently used meaning, there is less interference for homonyms in the
association condition if children store the two homonym meanings separately. If children had
treated the homonyms as a single entry, response accuracy would either have been similar to
performance for non-homonyms or poorer. The difference in performance on homonyms and
non-homonyms was stable over time. Thus, we assume that homonyms were treated as
separate entries from the beginning, which correlates with the assumption that separate
lexical entries develop at around the age of four years (Doherty, 2000; Srinivasan &
Snedeker, 2013).
Although we found similar developmental trajectories for homonyms and non-
homonyms, descriptive values indicated that children might improve more rapidly in the
unrelated condition if the reference word was a homonym. Thus, there might be some subtle
and long-term differences between children’s development on homonyms and non-
homonyms that could not be detected within a two-year time span.
4.2. Thematic Judgment Ability as an Early Predictor of Reading Abilities
In line with our expectations, children’s early thematic judgment abilities predicted
their word reading skills at the end of first grade over other common predictors of early
reading. By contrast, a sentence comprehension task as it is typically used to study children’s
early comprehension abilities on the sentence level did not predict later reading, although
both tasks were moderately correlated. This finding is important because effects of thematic
knowledge on beginning literacy have not been reported before, particularly on the word
level (e.g., Ennemoser et al., 2012; Leppänen et al, 2008; Nation et al., 2010).
Running head: THEMATIC JUDGMENT AND READING ACQUISITION
27
A semantic priming study with 10-year-olds showed that poor comprehenders rely
more strongly on thematic relations than average readers when accessing semantic
representations during reading (Nation & Snowling, 1999). While this indicates a connection
between reading abilities and thematic knowledge, it has not been clarified whether the
reliance on thematic knowledge was related specifically to reading comprehension
impairments or affected typical reading development in general. The effect of thematic
judgment on early reading abilities found in this study supports the latter assumption that
thematic knowledge in general is connected to reading acquisition. We did not investigate
how the development of early thematic knowledge can be fostered, and how it is linked to
reading difficulties and later reading comprehension abilities.
In previous studies on the impact of semantic knowledge on emergent literacy,
semantic knowledge was measured by broad assessments of listening (Ennemoser et al.,
2012) and sentence comprehension (Leppänen et al., 2008 Nation et al., 2010). In this study,
listening comprehension – despite being connected to thematic judgment - had no predictive
effect on word reading abilities at the end of first grade. This result corroborates previous
studies and points to the possibility that grammatically complex comprehension tasks are
linked to grammatically complex reading tasks due to the shared degree of complexity. Thus,
a lack of connection to early reading abilities might be linked to the complexity of the
semantic process the task taps into. Despite what was reported in the task manual (see Table
2), reliability of this task in this group of participants was low compared to other precursor
abilities. It would therefore be fruitful to see replications of this study with a more reliable
listening comprehension task.
In a follow-up analysis, we further investigated the question whether one component
of children’s early semantic processing was particularly related to their reading skills at the
end of first grade. Results showed some variability in the correlations of children’s
Running head: THEMATIC JUDGMENT AND READING ACQUISITION
28
performance in the four conditions. However, after considering the intercorrelations between
the various measures, their effects did not differ significantly from each other. Thus, the
effects of children’s semantic skills on reading seem to be homogenous and are not
specifically linked to any condition of the task, although they clearly differed in their overall
level of difficulty. It is, however, important to consider that item and sample size of our study
were not ideal for an assessment of such subtle differences. Further research would be needed
to draw any definite conclusions.
4.3. Conclusion
In sum, we investigated the development of young children’s ability to distinguish
different types of thematic relations, and whether this varied across homonyms and non-
homonyms. Furthermore, we investigated whether the ability to distinguish between different
thematic relations can predict later reading skills on the word level. Results show that
children strongly improved in their ability to distinguish between different strengths of
thematic relations in early childhood. In addition, children’s thematic judgment abilities
before school entry predicted their word reading abilities at the end of first grade in addition
to letter-sound knowledge, and in addition to listening comprehension abilities. We conclude
that the accessibility and usability of thematic knowledge in a young child’s lexicon has an
impact on reading acquisition. This is currently not reflected in theories of reading and
reading development (e.g., Perfetti & Hart, 2002; Ziegler & Goswami, 2005) or prediction
studies, and should be investigated further.
5. Acknowledgments
We thank Julia Mann, Felix Klapproth and Elisabeth Klose for their support in data
collection. We thank Gwen Schulte for proof-reading.
Running head: THEMATIC JUDGMENT AND READING ACQUISITION
29
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7. Appendix
Table A1. All Target Sentences, Matching Words and Distractors of the Thematic Judgment
Task for Non-Homonyms in German and English.
No Target Sentences Matching Words
Associated Wordsa
Unrelated Wordsa
1 Jan schaut auf die Wolke. Regen Berg Lippe Jan looks at the cloud. rain mountain lip 2 Simon bedeckt das Eis. Schnee Sommer Monster Simon covers the ice. snow summer monster 3 Lea lässt die Spinne. Netz Käfer Kamm Lea leaves the spider. web bug comb 4 Anja rutscht auf dem Stuhl. Platz Lehrer Schiff Anja wobbles on the chair. seat teacher ship 5 Roland kriecht unter den Busch. Zweig Pfad Sprache Roland crawls under the bush. twig path speech 6 Christoph sieht den Planet. Stern Mondc Zettel Christoph sees the planet. star moon note 7 Kim muss zum Palast. König Garten Meter Kim needs to go to the palace. king garden meter 8 Hans ruft den Ritter. Schwert Turnier Sitz Hans calls the knight. sword tournament seat 9 Martha isst das Salz. Pfeffer Brot Versuch Martha eats the salt. pepper bread attempt 10 Jakob nimmt den Hut. Zauberer Tasche Klasse Jacob takes the hat. wizard bag class 11 Georg sammelt den Pilz. Wald Stein Hals George picks the mushroom. forest stone throat 12 Karen fährt in den Bahnhof. Zug Straße Stirn Karen drives into the train station. train street forehead 13 Miriam sieht den Blitz. Donner Feuer Brief Miriam sees the lightning. thunder fire letter 14 Hanna verfolgt die Spur. Boden Himmel Freundin Hanna follows the trace. soil sky friend 15 Rex frisst die Pflanze. Baum Sonne Zahn Rex eats the plant. tree sun tooth 16 Lucie denkt an den Traum. Nacht Bild Küche Lucie thinks of the dream. night picture kitchen
Note. a distractors. c responses in association condition excluded from analysis.
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Table A2. All Target Sentences, Matching Words and Distractors of the Thematic Judgment
Task for Homonyms in German and English.
No Target Sentences Matching Words
Associated Wordsa
Unrelated Wordsa
1 Felix kickt den Ball. Fuß Königin Nudel Felix kicks the ball. (toy/ dance event) foot queen pasta 2 Daniel geht zur Bankb. Geld Park Spiegel Daniel goes to the bank. (bank/ bench) money park mirror 3 Christina schießt mit dem Bogenb. Pfeil Schrift Faden Christina shoots with the bow. (bow/ sheet) arrow script thread 4 Jutta schläft auf der Deckeb. Kissen Vorhang Witz Jutta sleeps on the blanket. (blanket/ ceiling) pillow curtain joke 5 Jana hält die Federb. Vogel Rad Flasche Jana holds the feather. (feather/ spring) bird wheel bottle 6 Auf Torsten sitzt die Fliegeb. Kopf Hemd Märchen The fly sits on Torsten. (insect/ bow tie) head shirt fairytale 7 Sascha bringt das Futterb. Pferd Jeans Stich Sascha brings the fodder. (fodder/ lining) horse jeans sting 8 Anne rennt durch den Gangb. Treppe Motor Löffel Anne runs through the corridor. (corridor/ gear) stairs engine spoon 9 Yannick kräht wie ein Hahnb. Huhn Wasser Freund Yannick crows like a rooster. (rooster/ tap) chicken water friend 10 Bastian fängt die Maus. Ratte Taste Brust Bastian catches the mouse. (rodent/ computer device) rat key breast 11 Oliver öffnet den Riegel. Tür Stück Onkel Oliver opens the bar. (bar of a lock/ of chocolate) door piece uncle 12 Johanna kommt im Rockb. Frau Stimme Jahr Johanna comes wearing a skirt. (clothing/ musical genre) woman voice year 13 Maja sieht durch die Scheibeb. Fenster Gurke Poster Maja looks through the window pane. (window pane/slice) window cucumber poster 14 Svenja sitzt am Seeb. Ufer Meer Ecke Svenja sits at the lake. (lake/ocean) shore sea corner 15 Michael steht am Stammb. Rinde Häuptling Zahl Michael stands at the trunk. (trunk/ tribe) bark/rind tribe chief digit 16 Alex macht das Torb. Spiel Burg c Magen Alex makes the goal. (goal/ gate) game castle stomach
Note. a distractors; bhomonyms in German but not in English or in both languages but
with different meanings in English. c responses in association condition excluded from
analysis.
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Table A3. Mean and standard errors of accuracy responses of adults per item.
Sentences Association Unrelated Non-Homonyms M SE M SE
1 1 0 1 0 2 1 0 0.89 0.07 3 1 0 1 0 4 0.89 0.07 1 0 5 1 0 1 0
6a 0.33 0.11 0.89 0.07 7 1 0 1 0 8 0.78 0.1 1 0 9 0.89 0.07 0.78 0.1
10 1 0 1 0 11 1 0 1 0 12 0.89 0.07 1 0 13 1 0 1 0 14 1 0 1 0 15 1 0 0.89 0.07 16 0.89 0.07 1 0
Homonyms M SE M SE
1 1 0 1 0 2 0.78 0.1 1 0 3 1 0 1 0 4 1 0 1 0 5 1 0 1 0 6 0.78 0.1 1 0 7 1 0 1 0 8 1 0 1 0 9 1 0 1 0
10 1 0 1 0 11 1 0 1 0 12 1 0 1 0 13 1 0 1 0 14 1 0 1 0 15 0.89 0.07 1 0
16a 0.67 0.11 1 0 Note. N = 20; The table corresponds to Tables A1 and A2; aitems excluded from analysis.
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Table A4. Mean and standard errors of accuracy responses of children per item and
across all time points.
Sentences Association Unrelated Non-Homonyms M SE M SE
1 0.86 0.04 0.94 0.03 2 0.64 0.06 0.91 0.04 3 0.82 0.05 0.94 0.03 4 0.77 0.05 0.85 0.05 5 0.86 0.04 0.91 0.04
6a 0.31 0.06 0.98 0.02 7 0.92 0.03 0.92 0.04 8 0.48 0.06 0.93 0.03 9 0.69 0.06 0.75 0.06
10 0.73 0.06 0.76 0.05 11 0.92 0.03 0.95 0.03 12 0.91 0.04 0.97 0.02 13 0.75 0.06 0.85 0.04 14 0.89 0.04 0.75 0.06 15 0.89 0.04 0.61 0.06 16 0.89 0.04 0.91 0.04
Homonyms M SE M SE
1 0.93 0.03 0.93 0.03 2 0.72 0.06 0.95 0.03 3 0.95 0.03 0.93 0.03 4 0.92 0.03 0.93 0.03 5 0.89 0.04 0.9 0.04 6 0.72 0.06 0.82 0.05 7 0.92 0.03 0.96 0.03 8 0.88 0.04 0.91 0.04 9 0.94 0.03 0.91 0.04
10 0.91 0.04 0.95 0.03 11 0.62 0.06 0.78 0.05 12 0.82 0.05 0.88 0.04 13 0.97 0.02 0.95 0.03 14 0.62 0.06 0.95 0.03 15 0.78 0.05 0.91 0.04
16a 0.37 0.06 0.71 0.06 Note. The table corresponds to Tables A1 and A2; a Items excluded from analysis.